Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Center for National Policy (CNP) has just announced it will be hosting an event on March 6, 2013 titled "The Spy Who Hacked Me: America and Cyber Espionage."

Here is a description of the event:

The
first two months of 2013 have seen an increase in media attention
surrounding cyber attacks and cyber espionage incidents targeting major
US banks and businesses. As a follow on to incidents including DDoS
attacks on US banks, hackings at Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, and the
recently released Mandiant APT1 cyber attack report CNP President Scott
Bates will host an expert panel to discuss cyber espionage developments
in the international arena.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

A variety of husband-wife teams have been affiliated with think tanks. Recent examples include:

Kurt Campbell and Lael Brainard. Mr. Campbell, who just stepped down as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was the co-founder of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He will soon become Chairman of CNAS. He also served as Senior Vice President, Director of the International Security Program, and the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in National Security Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His wife, Lael Brainard, Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, was a long-time Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Douglas Elmendorf and Karen Dynan. Mr. Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), was a Senior Fellow at Brookings. His wife, Karen Dynan, is Vice President, Co-Director of the Economic Studies Program at Brookings.

Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan. Mr. Kagan is the Christopher DeMuth Chair and Director, Critical Threats Project at American Enterprise Institute (AEI). His brother is Robert Kagan, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kimberly Kagan heads the Institute for the Study of War.

Robert Einhorn and Jessica Einhorn. Mr. Einhorn, Special Advisor for Nonproliferation and Arms Control at the State Department, was a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) International Security Program. Jessica Einhorn is a trustee at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and sits on the Board of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). She is also affiliated with the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Monday, February 25, 2013

Muckety's latest think tank map outlines the close ties between the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the White House.

In the recently released University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings,
CNAS was ranked as the 14th best think tank in the US. It was also
ranked as the 24th best security and international affairs think tank in
the world. It was ranked 25th in the world in terms of think tanks
having the most significant impact on public policy.

It was also ranked 18th in the world in terms of best use of the
Internet or social media. It was ranked as the 21st best think tank in
terms of best use of media (print or electronic). CNAS was also ranked
as the 20th best think tank in terms of best external relations/public
engagement program.

Hackers spied on employees at the Aspen Institute for two months,
snooping on their email correspondence before the FBI discovered the
breach and traced its origin to China, executives at the think tank told
The Huffington Post.

It was the second time the Washington-based Aspen Institute has been
hacked in the past two years, according to Trent Nichols, its director
of IT services. Nichols said in an interview Thursday that hackers stole the user names
and passwords of three employees -- including president and chief
executive Walter Isaacson -- and used the information to repeatedly log
in to the institute's Web mail service.

Nichols said he learned about the cyber-espionage campaign in a Jan. 6
email from the Department of Homeland Security that revealed one email
account had been hacked. The next day, he received a phone call from the
FBI, saying that two additional employees' emails had been hacked.

"We were shocked," Nichols said. The hackers "would just go in, read
their emails and get out. They were basically snooping around to see
what they could find."

Isaacson said the FBI told him "the Chinese had hacked the Aspen Institute."

"I said that was fine, and maybe they will read all of our reports
and that will be good," Isaacson said in an email to HuffPost. "But then
the agent called back a couple of weeks later and said, 'OK here are
all your passwords that they got.' And I realized it was both scary and
felt like I had been violated. It made me angry."

Founded in 1950, the Aspen Institute hosts seminars, programs and
conferences on public policy issues. Board members include former U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Walt Disney chief
executive Michael Eisner and billionaire conservative David Koch.

"The hackers seem to think we knew something they wanted to know," Nichols said.Nichols said he cleaned malware from the employees' computers and
told them to change their passwords. But he said the nonprofit
organization lacked the resources to prevent future attacks.

"We don't have the money to pay for a forensic team to find this sort
of thing," Nichols said. "We don’t have the manpower. I've got one
network administrator and he's juggling email and firewalls. He's very
busy."

Nichols said the Aspen Institute installs antivirus products from
Symantec on its employees' computers. But the software didn't catch the
hackers, Nichols said, because the malware was custom-written to evade
detection.

Nichols said he encourages employees to be more careful when checking email.

"The best thing you can do is teach staff to think, 'Does this email
look legit?'" Nichols said. "People have gotten more cautious about
clicking on links. But people are in a rush and assume some messages are
from friends and don't think before clicking. And sometimes it's too
late."

Nichols said the cyberspies most likely hacked Aspen Institute
employees through what is known as a "spear phishing attack." In such
attacks, hackers send targeted emails to employees that appear to come
from a trusted source, like a friend or colleague, but contain malicious
links or attachments that, when clicked, download malware onto victims'
computers and allow hackers to remotely spy on their activities.

In 2011, the security firm McAfee published a report that identified a five-year cyber-espionage operation
that targeted 71 companies, governments, and non-profit organizations
around the world. Though it was not named in the McAfee report, one of
those organizations was the Aspen Institute, Nichols said.

Security experts said they considered that operation the work of
Chinese hackers. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied any
involvement in hacking.

Sean Henry, a former FBI cybersecurity official, has said think tanks
make valuable targets for cyberspies because they provide policy
research for federal agencies, and their employees often join the
government and work on classified data.

Start asking security experts which powerful Washington institutions have been penetrated by Chinese cyberspies, and this is the usual answer: almost all of them.

The list of those hacked in recent years includes law firms, think tanks, news organizations, human rights groups, contractors, congressional offices, embassies and federal agencies.

“The dark secret is there is no such thing as a secure unclassified network,” said James A. Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has been hacked in the past. “Law firms, think tanks, newspapers — if there’s something of interest, you should assume you’ve been penetrated.”

“They’re trying to make connections between prominent people who work at think tanks, prominent donors that they’ve heard of and how the government makes decisions,” said Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, which also has been hacked. “It’s a sophisticated intelligence-gathering effort at trying to make human-network linkages of people in power, whether they be in Congress or the executive branch.”

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on cyber spying which notes that the Brookings Institution has been the target of cyber spying.

On February 11, 2013, BPC announced that it was launching a new Immigration Task Force - co-chaired by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and former Governors Haley Barbour and Ed Rendell.

Here is the previous Think Tank Watch post on the best new think tanks of 2012. That list, which has some overlap with the 2013 list, was based on think tanks that were established in the past 18 months.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Undersecretary of the Navy Bob Work has been selected as the new chief executive office of the Center for a New American Security,The Cable has learned.

The board of directors of CNAS, the think tank begun in 2008 by former Assistant Secretary of StateKurt Campbell and former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy, chose Work at their meeting Tuesday to fill the void left by Nate Fick, who stepped down last November to become CEO of Endgame, Inc., a cyber security firm. A formal announcement is expected Wednesday, but The Cable obtained the press release in advance. Work begins work at CNAS on April 22.

Work's selection completes the reorganization of the CNAS management team. PresidentRichard Fontaine, former advisor to Sen.John McCain(R-AZ), replaced John Nagllast May. Nagl left to be a research fellow at the Naval Academy's history center and then subsequently announced he would leave Annapolis to become the headmaster at the Haverford School for boys. CNAS also recently acquiredShawn Brimley as vice president and director of studies.

Ken Silverstein, Fellow at the the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a contributing editor to Harper's, just wrote a piece for the New Republic on the fact that "think tank salaries are looking more and more like lobbyist salaries."

Here are some of my favorite lines:

Think-tanking and lobbying have come to look more and more alike.
Just like lobbyists, think tanks can frame policy debates and generate
political pressure—for the right price.

Outgoing Heritage president Ed Fuelner received nearly $1.2 million in 2011, according to the group’s tax filing. If DeMint gets the same compensation—and one expects he’ll get more—it would amount to a raise of about 700 percent from his $174,000 annual take as a senator.

In addition to Feulner, at least 19 other officials [at Heritage] cleared $200,000, including former attorney general Ed Meese ($420,000), former congressman Ernest Istook ($303,000), and former labor secretary Elaine Chao ($290,000).

AEI’s 2011 tax filing shows Dick Cheney received $210,000 for toiling an average of one hour per week as a board trustee. Poor John Bolton, a senior fellow, took in roughly the same as Cheney even though those same tax documents say he spends 60 hours per week on AEI work.

There are plenty of well-respected scholars at prominent Beltway think-tank positions. But supporting such large organizations requires the same ceaseless fundraising that politicians conduct when running for reelection—and the same sort of ignoble temptations.

Nowadays if donors don’t like the results they get, they are increasingly inclined to move their money to more compliant think tanks, or to more expressly political operations. “Think tanks are competing with consulting firms, law firms, Super PACS, lobbyists and advocacy groups,” says James McGann, director of the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. “That puts pressure on think tanks to be more responsive to donors.” The new buzz term among private and public donors is “high impact philanthropy,” McCann says.

“Think tanks have become more like PR and lobbying shops than research organizations,” says Steve Clemons, a former executive vice president at the New America Foundation. “That they’re lesser regulated than lobbyists makes them especially attractive to some funders.”

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on think tank salaries, which will be updated soon.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Massachusetts Avenue between 17th St. and 18th St. in Washington, DC, home of the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), and other think tanks, will be getting a new, conservative neighbor.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI), currently located at 1150 17th St., NW, will be moving to 1785 Massachusetts Ave., NW, the current home of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

AEI, which was founded in 1943 and advocates for right-leaning public
policies, will move to the Dupont Circle building from 1150 17th St.
NW, where it occupies the top three floors, but is in need of more space
in which to grow.

“This is a vital step for AEI and our
unyielding mission,” AEI President Arthur Brooks said in a statement.
“Our growing community of world-class scholars and staff need a building
equal to their talent. This property gives us an ideal facility to
enhance our expanding programs. We’ll be excited to call it our new
home.”

The statement was issued jointly by AEI and the National
Trust. The organizations declined to share the sales price because the
final details of the deal are still being finalized.

Before AEI moves into the Dupont building, National Trust needs to find a new home.

AEI was just rated as the 20th best think tank in the world by the University of Pennsylvania's annual think tank rankings. It was also rated as the 7th best think tank in the US.

AEI's move to think tank row will mean that you can walk to the #1 (Brookings), #2 (CEIP), #7 (AEI), and #12 (PIIE) best think tanks in the US in about one minute. A true think tank hoppers' delight.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) used to be housed within CEIP at 1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, but it moved several years ago to 1777 F Street, NW. Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) new think tank, The McCain Institute, is housed within the CFR building in DC.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is expected to move to its new headquarters, located at 1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW, later this year. CSIS is currently located at 1800 K Street, NW. While not on "think tank row," it is certainly a lot closer.

Friday, February 15, 2013

The Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS) released a document last week that details the foreign governments, businesses, and other that have funded the think tank.

The document was released after Senate Republicans demanded the financial information from Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, who is Chairman of ACUS. Here is a letter requesting information about ACUS funding.

A letter dated February 8, 2013 says that Hagel's position as Chairman of ACUS has been on a pro bono basis since he got that position in February 2009.

As for funding, the document says that ACUS does not make public a comprehensive list of all its donors. ACUS says is publicly acknowledges corporate donors of $5,000 or more. ACUS attached a list of foreign corporate donors to the Council over the past five years. That list contains 102 corporations.

The document also includes a list of "foreign government entities" that have funded ACUS over the past five years. That list contains eight entities:

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR)

DEPA Public Gas Corporation (Greece)

JP Transnafta (Serbia)

Petroleum Pipeline Corporation (BOTAS) (Turkey)

Istanbul Natural Gas Distribution Co. (IGDAS) (Turkey)

Turkey Army College

The Electricity Generation Company (EUAS) (Turkey)

Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) (Turkey)

Lastly, the list includes foreign governments that have funded ACUS over the past five years. That list contains 16 governments:

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin discusses the Atlantic Council memo and writes about Hagle's "complicated ties." In another post, she quotes a "disgusted" Senate staffer as saying that "the fact that the Atlantic Council is unable to simply release the Schedule B from their Form 990s over the last five years suggests they are concealing donors that could sink the nomination."

The Free Beacon notes that some Senate Republicans are not happy with the Atlantic Council's "limited disclosure."

The Free Beacon reports that multiple foreign corporations that have bypassed or attempted to bypass US or EU sanctions against Iran are funding ACUS.

The Free Beacon also suggests that Hagel has "nefarious" ties to Kazakhstan and Chevron via ACUS.

In a Washington Post opinion piece, former Rep. John Tanner (D-TN), who has served on the ACUS Board, comes out in defense of Hagel.

ACUS was recently rated as the 17th best think tank in the US by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 19th best think tank in the world in terms of best external relations/public engagement program.

Valentine's Day is here again, and every lover who buys his or her significant other a box of candy will pay just a little bit more for the privilege. This is because sugar quotas guarantee sugar cane and beet producers and sugar processors higher returns that they would obtain if they faced genuine competition from the global market.

Here is what Tyler Cowen, General Director of the Mercatus Center, and Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, has to say:

Love actually rings in at $43,842.08, according to RateSupermarket.ca,
which has calculated the price tag of the typical modern relationship –
from a one-year courtship, followed by a one-year engagement to the
wedding day.

Betsey Stevenson of the University of Michigan and Justin Wolfers, a Nonresident Senior Fellow, Economics Studies at the Brookings Institution, penned a piece today titled "Valentine's Day and the Economics of Love" that has a slightly happier tone.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The news satire organization The Onion has done it again, breaking at hot story about the Pope accepting a Senior Analyst Position at a Catholic think tank. Even though this is a joke, it is quite amusing:

Just hours after announcing his resignation from the papacy Monday, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed that he had accepted a lucrative senior analyst position at a New York–based Catholic think tank, the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person. “My years at the Vatican have been tremendously rewarding, but the time has come for me to move on to new challenges, and after interviewing for a variety of different positions, the senior analyst job at the Westchester Institute seemed like the natural next step for my career,” said the 85-year-old Benedict, whose extensive résumé reportedly begins with the line “Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of Apostles, 2005-2013.” “With my experience, I believe I can bring a unique perspective to today’s most important policy debates, whether it’s opposing homosexual behavior or denouncing the use of contraception in AIDS-stricken nations. I look forward to getting started this March.” Benedict added that he plans to maintain a good relationship with his soon-to-be former employer, just in case any worthwhile positions open up in the future.

Click here for a list from Wikipedia which documents when third parties have mistakenly cited The Onion as real news.

This is not the first fictitious think tank to be created in recent memory. Check out this previous Think Tank Watch post on the Institute for Continuing Conflict.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Kurt
Campbell, one of the key architects of the Obama
administration's Asia "pivot," has left the State Department and is set to be
the next chairman of the board at the Center for a New American Security, the think
tank he helped found in 2008, multiple sources told The Cable.

Campbell will be joined on the CNAS board by Michèle Flournoy, the former
undersecretary of defense for policy, who was the founding president of CNAS
when Campbell was the founding CEO. Campbell's last day at State was last
Friday. Flournoy attended his goodbye party in the State Department's diplomatic
reception room, where a hot topic of discussion was who will replace Campbell
as the State Department's top Asia official.

Here is the current list of the Board of Directors at CNAS. Richard Danzig is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors at CNAS.

In the recently released University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, CNAS was ranked as the 14th best think tank in the US. It was also ranked as the 24th best security and international affairs think tank in the world. It was ranked 25th in the world in terms of think tanks having the most significant impact on public policy.

It was also ranked 18th in the world in terms of best use of the Internet or social media. It was ranked as the 21st best think tank in terms of best use of media (print or electronic). CNAS was also ranked as the 20th best think tank in terms of best external relations/public engagement program.

As Think Tank Watch previously reported, there has been speculation that Campbell's wife, Lael Brainard, a former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, could become the next US Trade Representative (USTR).

DeMint, a Greenville Republican who spent 13 years in House and Senate, is investing $300,000 from his remaining campaign money to establish the Palmetto Policy Forum. He also will serve as chairman.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, DeMint said, “All over the country states are becoming the innovators of bold public policy” on topics including education, energy development and tort reform.

“The muscle behind these ideas is often coming from very innovative...policy groups” at the state level, DeMint said. “South Carolina can be one of those policy innovators.”The Heritage Foundation, where DeMint is president-elect, is working with state-based policy groups around the country, he said.

Oran Smith, director of the Palmetto Family Council, will serve as a senior fellow contributing to legislative research at the Palmetto Policy Forum. Education, healthcare and infrastructure will be the first topics the forum tackles, Smith said.

Ellen Weaver, DeMint’s former state director, will become the forum’s president and chief executive on March 4 after helping with the transition of U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a North Charleston Republican whom Gov. Nikki Haley appointed to fill DeMint’s seat last month.

DeMint will officially start as President of the Heritage Foundation on April 3, 2013.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) announced today that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will join CFR later this month as a Distinguished Fellow. He will be based at CFR's headquarters in New York.

Here is what Reuters has to say. Here is what the Los Angeles Times has to say. Here is what the Washington Post has to say.

What that amounts to exactly and what it pays I couldn't say, in part
because CFR currently doesn't seem to have anyone with the title
"distinguished fellow" which I think we're supposed to understand to be
more senior than "senior fellow." But Geithner will be in residence at
CFR with an office and presumably doing some kind of writing.

The move keeps Mr. Geithner, 51, plugged into Washington and New York
power circles while giving him ample time to pursue other interests,
such as public speaking and perhaps even penning a book. Many of his
friends speculated that after four grueling years at the Treasury
Department, Mr. Geithner would choose a low-key post for the next year
or so that would give him plenty of flexibility.

CFR is an
influential member-based organization that operates as sort of a think
tank, hosting panels, speeches, and publishing reports on a range of
current events. Mr. Geithner has plenty of colleagues at CFR and would likely fit in
easily. One of his mentors, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, is
CFR's co-chairman.

Mr. Geithner was previously a Senior Fellow at CFR in 2011.

Here is a video of Geithner speaking at CFR on June 13, 2012. Here is a transcript from a speech that Geithner gave at CFR on April 26, 2011. Here is a transcript from a speech that Geithner gave at CFR on March 25, 2009.

CFR is not the only think tank that Geither has embraced. For example, in August 2010 he gave a speech about tax cuts at the Center for American Progress (CAP). In April 2012, Geithner gave a speech about the economy at the Brookings Institution.

It is possible that fellow former Cabinet member Hillary Clinton could also join CFR. Clinton, who last week stepped down as Secretary of State, just gave her farewell speech at CFR several days ago.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Lael Brainard, a former Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Vice President and Director of the Global Economy and Development program (2001-2009), has been named as a possible replacement for Ron Kirk, who is stepping down as the US Trade Representative (USTR).

Brainard currently serves as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.

Her husband is Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He is Co-founder of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Campbell is expected to step down soon and he may return to CNAS.

Here is what Roll Call is reporting today in an article titled "Heritage Retreat Lacks Boldface Names," referring to the Heritage Foundation's annual Conservative Members Retreat:

Some of the House’s most prominent conservatives will huddle in Baltimore this week for The Heritage Foundation retreat, but two of the most notable names in the conservative movement are skipping the occasion.

Heritage President and CEO Jim DeMint, who recently resigned from the Senate to take the job, and House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the GOP’s recent vice presidential nominee, will not attend the three-day confab.

Retreat organizers wanted to host an address by DeMint, the former South Carolina senator, but decided not to out of an abundance of caution. Criminal law forbids former senators from influencing members for two years after leaving Congress.

“We’re handling him with kid gloves because we don’t want to put him in any situations where it’s technically legal, but it looks bad,” said Michael Franc, vice president for government studies at Heritage. “He has the ethical limits in terms of dealing with members that might be deemed as traversing the boundaries of ethics laws.”

The three-day retreat, which starts on Wednesday night, will lack the star power that appearances by DeMint or Ryan would have brought. Moreover, the schedule lacks big-name conservative speakers altogether.

Organizers reached out to several governors aligned with the conservative movement, but they all declined the invitation, according to a GOP congressional aide. Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, both former members of the Republican Study Committee when they were House members, had scheduling conflicts. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels could not make it either.

Around this time last year, Roll Call had an article about the 2012 retreat titled "Heritage Retreat Hosts Wide Range of GOP." That Heritage retreat took place in Philadelphia. The 2011 retreat took place in Los Angeles, California.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) will be giving a major policy speech today at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Although registration is now closed, one can watch it online here.

Rep. Cantor's office has issued a press release with some excerpts of the speech, which is being titled "Making Life Work."

AEI is one of Cantor's favorite think tanks to launch new initiatives and gives various speeches. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has also used AEI as a policy platform, such as when he gave this talk in September 2010 on Congressional reform at AEI.

In September 2012 Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Marco Rubio used AEI to launch a legislative initiative related to higher education.

At an AEI event last year titled "The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise," Eric Cantor was one of the speakers.

Here is an interview that Nick Schulz, AEI DeWitt Wallace Fellow and Editor-in-Chief of American.com, did with Rep. Cantor in April 2012.

In May 2010 it was reported that Rep. Cantor attended AEI's annual Irving Kristol Award ceremony. The honoree of that event was Gen. David Petraeus.

AEI is not the only think tank platform that Cantor has used. For example, he gave this May 2010 speech at the Heritage Foundation's President's Club meeting in which he delivered remarks on national security policy. At that speech, it was reported that he was booed by the crowd when he rebuffed a questioner who suggested President Obama is a "domestic enemy."

Rep. Cantor also gave a January 2011 speech at the Heritage Foundation titled "How Federal Spending Undercuts Economic Freedom."

It was reported today that Rep. Cantor will not attend this week's Heritage Foundation retreat in Baltimore, Maryland.

As Think Tank Watch has previously noted, Rep. Cantor started his own think tank called the National Council for a New America. That think tank has been in "suspended status" since 2010.

Update:Here is what Washington Post's Dana Milbank had to say about the Cantor event at AEI.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Not one Indian think tank figures in the Global 50 annual list for 2012 released
by the University of Pennsylvania end-January. China beats India in this area as
well and so do, in some specific cases, think tanks from such countries as Ethiopia, Cost Rica, Brazil, Egypt, and Argentina. The best India has managed is the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at Number
51.

Indeed, no Indian think tank makes the top 50 list in terms of the top 50 non-US think tanks worldwide.

As Think Tank Watch noted in this previous post, the Brookings Institution just opened up Brookings India, and it will be interesting to see whether that think tank can help India crack the top 50 in the next think tank rankings.

About Me

Think Tank Watch is a one-stop-shop for learning and thinking about think tanks. It covers domestic and global think tank news, gossip, personnel, reports, studies, and pretty much anything else related to think tanks. Think Tank Watch can be found cruising the mean streets of "Think Tank Row" and beyond, attending scores of think tank events each year. Since its founding in 2012, Think Tank Watch has become the #1 source of think tank news and gossip in the world. Questions, comments, and tips can be sent to:
info (at) thinktankwatch.com